Cruising: Salt on your senses

Does breathing salty air increase your appetite? Photo / Getty Images

Kim Knight ponders the link between sea air and appetite.

You could have bathed a baby in that bowl. A really, really large baby.

In the galley of the cruise ship, there was a bowl of chopped bananas big enough to sink a — well, let's not labour that adage.

Cruise ship dinners are the stuff of legends. Measure your meal in metres and when you're tired of the buffet, check out the specialist dining rooms. Why go to Thomas Keller, Jamie Oliver and Marco Pierre White et al, when their menus will come to you after the lecture on Venetian art and before the free line dancing class on the promenade deck?

I don't know how many cakes they planned to make with all that chopped banana. 100? 1000? Never mind, said our galley guide — every single one would be eaten by the morning.

Fact: Sea air makes us hungry.

Fact checked: I could find no recent scientific evidence to support this.

The internet had some thoughts. My favourite Reddit theorist claimed "there are fish in the sea, which causes one to think of fish and chips, then suddenly hunger pangs abound". Another suggested it was "probably because the smell of doughnuts fills the air" but I think there are some obvious holes in that thesis.

I delved deeper. Paperspast, National Library's digital collection of very old New Zealand knowledge, contains countless newspaper articles recommending the curative effect of a day at the beach or a voyage on the ocean.

Consider this, from 1885: "I need scarcely remind you, Sir, how important to us all is an occasional change of air and scene. The monotonous routine of daily duties, the sedentary indoor life which so many are compelled to lead, the mental worry associated with professional work, all tend to impair the nutrition of the nervous system and diminish both mind and body. It is under such conditions that the renovating influences of sea air and sea water become so valuable."

Mr Alfred Ginders, from the Government Laboratory in Rotorua, went on to say that the iodine, bromine, ozone, hydrochloric acid and particles of salt in sea air "accelerate the metamorphosis of tissue" leading to an increase in both "functional vigour" and body weight.

Five years later, at a gathering of the Chicago Laryngological and Climatological Association, Mr John A. Robison outlined the health effects of a sea voyage, claiming "the tonic influences of the air creates appetite, and the enforced rest revives the tired body".

Robison said the English recommended the trip to Australia or New Zealand because "it afforded the longest spell of marine influence". In one study of 65 patients, 77 per cent had improved health at the end of their voyage, and some 22 per cent had worsened (there is no record of what happened to the remaining patient but he may have been eaten — nine members of the study group gained more than 14kg).

On the modern cruise ship, passengers amble between all-you-can-eat dumpling bars to steakhouses serving steaks that are only slightly smaller than Vanuatu. It wasn't always like this.

Photo / Getty Images

In 1890, the American Journal of Medical Science published an article by James Alexander Lindsay. He noted the voyage to the colonies used to involve seven months on a staple diet of salt beef or pork and mouldy biscuits. Much had changed and now the modern physician should "strive to tempt the consumptive, the hypochondriac or the jaded brain worker to try the healing effects of a cruise".

On a cruise, "the voyager enjoys complete muscular repose, while at the same time he is in constant motion . . . there are no newspapers, letters or telegrams. No trains to catch, no appointments to keep. No visitors need be expected, no startling news be apprehended".

The improvement in appetite is striking, writes Mr Lindsay. In such a state, a healthy man might gain 10 pounds (4.5kg) in a fortnight.

The more I read, the more it became apparent. The sea is a panacea; a wet that whets. I turned the pages to 1939 and a report in the Horowhenua Chronicle:

"Here is a problem for the housewife. If she had to provide for 780 guests, on menus ranging right up to the standards of the best hotel, how would she go about it?"

Such a question could only be answered by the chief steward on the Awatea, speeding across the Tasman on a day "when the sea air did no more than cause a ripple on the surface and sharpen the appetites of the travellers".

In brief, the travellers ate a lot, including one tonne of potatoes ("but the housewife's sympathies need not go out to the fellows who had to peel that ton. The liner has electric peelers!") We will never know how those spuds were cooked. One Reddit user reckons salt air makes you hungry because "it's got salt in it and that makes you think of chips".

But while the internet had established a clear causal link between salt air and appetite, I was not satisfied. I picked up the phone and dialled Pawel K. Olszewski, an associate professor in physiology at Waikato University, who laughed at me.

He said: "I think — without looking into the scientific literature — my best guess is that it's an urban legend."

Olszewski says there are definite connections between drinking salty water (or eating salt) and appetite.

"However, in terms of breathing air? Unless you go into a toilet and find yourself faced with unpleasant and unpalatable smells . . . I don't think so. It's one of the reasons aromatherapy doesn't work." Olszewski suspects any self-perceived change in appetite at sea is more to do with the literal change of scenery, "a change in the environment and our relaxation levels and a change in the general pace of life which allows us to focus on other things".

Like banana cake.